American Diplomacy in the Orient

, such a noise of oars and sails, and numbers of ships and boats ! " One of the presidents of the Dutch factory, in giving an account of his visit to the Shogun, states that there were as many as a thousand vessels in the bay of Yedo. The measures of exclusion adopted had the effect to deter the European nations from further attempts at intercourse, either commercial or political, with Japan, but not so as to China. The trade of that vast empire was greatly coveted, and the profits which were derived from the limited commerce through Canton, even with its burdensome conditions, only whetted the appetite of the avaricious merchants for greater facilities. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries repeated attempts were made by the governments of Portugal, Holland, Great Britain, and Russia, by imposing embassies sent to Peking, to secure greater trade privileges. The embassies of the first three governments were invariably attended with failure.1 Russia, however, occupied a different relation. She was not seeking for maritime intercourse. Her vessels of war did not come into Chinese waters to awaken alarm and commit outrages. Her commerce had to be established over a long land route. Besides, Russia had become a coterminous neighbor of China, and it was necessary to establish some kind of political relations. By 1637 the Cossacks had advanced across Siberia and stood on the shores of the Pacific at the Sea of Okhotsk. The Amur River had become a part of the boun...